Apocalypse
by MassEffectMaster
Summary: Not with a bang, but with a whimper. What would happen if Shepard wasn't around for the events of the Mass Effect games? Warning: Lots of character deaths/grim fates. MShep.


My second fanfic, following the possibility of what would happen if Shepard wasn't around during Mass Effect 1 and 2. Shepard has the War Hero and Ruthless reputations. Oneshot.

* * *

He had killed too many. Humans and batarians alike, he had slaughtered them. He was nothing but a murderer. Why? Why was he alive while the rest of his squad had fallen dead?

Since the mission at Torfan a week ago, he had contemplated this hundreds of times. He didn't deserve to live. He didn't deserve to be the exception. He had to do it.

With a trembling hand, John Shepard raised the pistol to his skull and took a deep breath. Just a small movement, barely a twitch, and he would be gone. It was remarkable the power a gun had. It could free millions, or slaughter thousands.

By his count, Shepard was deep into the thousands for his kill count. Thousands of lives for his. He had to end it.

Besides, he wasn't really anyone important. They regarded Shepard as a hero for his actions, he regarded himself a criminal.

On Elysium he had found his father dead, he went into a rage. He killed thousands of batarian pirates as a revenge of sorts. He went throughout the war as a vessel of death and destruction. He finally went to Torfan as his last mission in the war. He mercilessly executed all the batarians, even the surrendering ones.

Only once the job was finished and Shepard got an opportunity to look at the corpses of his men around him did he snap out of it. His revenge was over, and the cost was too much. The public called him the Butcher of Torfan. Whether that was an insult or a compliment was debatable.

Nonetheless, it was not a burden Shepard wished to bear. He owed no one anything, he had no reason to stop. He aimed the pistol to his head and took a deep breath.

* * *

Ashley felt her chest heaving as she took cover. The geth were here. **GETH!** They hadn't come out from the Perseus Veil for hundreds of years, why now? Her whole team had been slaughtered by geth fire.

They just ripped right through Alliance shielding. She took a deep breath and steeled herself. Ashley barely popped out of her cover to lay down some assault rifle fire. It barely did a dent, it may have killed one of them.

Through brief glimpses, Ashley could see that more geth were arriving. She took one deep breath after another and checked her assault rifle. Ashley moved out of cover again, but this time she wasn't so lucky. The geth got her in the legs, and one got her in the stomach. They were good shots.

Ashley could barely move, but for an Alliance woman like her, that was enough. She rolled onto her back and pulled out her pistol. She kept firing at the geth, slowly but surely. It didn't do a damn thing. But for some reason they weren't killing her. They acted like they didn't care about her at all!

She didn't even manage to hit any one of them enough times to take their shields down. Her vision was blurry and her hands were too shaky. Before she knew it, they were right above her. They lifted her up with their robotic arms and started carrying her. It was odd, they were respectful enough to carry her instead of dragging her wherever they were going.

Nonetheless, she didn't have sympathy for a machine just because it was going to kill her a little nicer. Ashley tried to aim her pistol, before they seized it and threw it away. Now she had nothing, she had used up her grenades, and she had lost her other weaponry in the run away from the geth.

The geth came to a stop, and lay her down on something. Whatever she was being put down on was circular, and it was small. Only her torso could fit on it. She tried to struggle off the elevated platform, but the geth held her arms down enough so that she couldn't move.

She tried to move again, and she was rewarded with death. A giant spike pillar rose from the platform and stabbed her through the chest. It was the same one she had seen the geth putting civilians on. She could feel everything in her body draining away as she was impaled upon the spike. If only someone could have come to save her, come to save Eden Prime sooner.

* * *

Kaiden inspected the body on the spike, he had fought through dozens of geth to get here. Jenkins had been killed, as had Johnson, the third crew member. It was only Kaiden left. He had to find and extract the beacon. For some reason, the geth were impaling people on giant spikes all across Eden Prime.

This particular person was an Alliance soldier, it was a dark haired woman with pink and white armor. He had to ignore her... he had to ignore all the dead bodies. Damn... He put it out of his mind and moved on. He had to secure the beacon.

When he finally arrived at the beacon site, after barely surviving dozens of geth, the whole place was abandoned. There were only geth around.

As he forced his way through all the geth, sneaking past who he couldn't kill, he could see the geth evacuating.

What the hell was going on? First the geth come here and kill everyone, then they just get the hell out? They came for the beacon so... they got away with it! Damn! Kaiden looked around and tried to kill the geth that were in the rear. He succeeded and contacted the Normandy, "This is Commander Alenko, the beacon has been taken by geth, I need-"

He would never get to finish that message, because the bombs the geth had set up, unknown to him, went off. The resulting explosion killed the few civilians that had gotten to safety, as well as immediately burning Kaiden to death in a painful hellfire. The geth had gotten the beacon, gotten away, and devastated Eden Prime.

As Kaiden lay down, clinging to life for just a few more seconds, he asked himself why his team couldn't have moved faster. If he had more trained soldiers, and used less time to mourn, maybe they could have stopped the geth from getting the beacon. Kaiden closed his scorched eyes and let his heartbeat stop. It had to come to this no matter what, though.

* * *

There was a suit breach, she had been shot. Tali Zorah nar'Rayya had just come to this alley per the instructions of one of the Shadow Broker's agents; Fist. She had immediately realized that something was wrong, that saved her from an immediate death.

Now she was being shot at by three mercenaries. Her suit was punctured, and she was bleeding. This had happened before, and she had been seriously hurt. But now, she doubted she could get out without several more wounds.

She was out of grenades too; the first one had been used to distract her attackers so that she could get to a defendable position. The second was thrown at the enemies' cover; it blew the crates all around the room. Her third and last grenade was in front of her cover. It was a trap and one that was about to pay off.

One of the mercenaries was lying injured in the corner, the second hiding behind cover. The third was only separated from Tali by a few crates. He was right in front of her, right on top of her grenade.

Once she set it off though, she would have to run or her disrupted cover would allow her assailants to shoot her.

Tali's breathing was shaky, she tried to calm herself and started counting to three.

_1-This will work, it has to work._

_2-But does she have enough time to get out of this place?_

_3-The only way she could possibly get out alive is if someone just happened to burst through the door. If only someone had happened to stumble upon the scene a little earlier._

She detonated the grenade, splattering pieces of the third mercenary around the walls, and she ran towards the door.

Tali made the first few steps, but then the second mercenary pulled out his pistol and began to shoot.

The first few shots missed, but one landed. Right in Tali's leg. She crumpled to the floor, and began to crawl. There was no possible way she could stand after that hit. It was painful, incredibly painful, but she had to survive.

It was pathetic. It was heart-wrenchingly pathetic, watching an innocent young quarian crawl for her life. But mercenaries didn't really care. One of them grabbed her, and flipped her over so that she could see the shotgun aimed at her face.

Her escape would mean Saren's conviction during a trial that had no other evidence. She started begging for her life, pleading for any chance to live. Her cries were cut short by a shotgun blast through her faceplate. With that, Saren maintained his freedom.

* * *

A firefight in an alley. It was a gruesome sight, a mercenary was bleeding and crushed under several crates, another was blown to pieces, and yet another mercenary had a hole in his head. It looked like he had been shot so the information he had could be taken. He had probably survived to be betrayed.

The worst though, was a dead quarian girl. She had been shot once through the leg, once through the head, and once, a much earlier wound, in the arm. It was horrific. Seeing this was a reminder of the horrors that could lie even on the Citadel.

Garrus Vakarian was in charge of the investigation. This was his last, he had pissed off his boss enough times and his boss had pissed him off enough too. He had quit. Well, he was fired, but it wasn't like Garrus was broken up about it.

This used to horrify Garrus, but he wasn't that bothered anymore. Whether that was a good thing or not, he couldn't tell. This was an exception. For some reason, this girl's corpse distinctly disturbed him. He didn't know her, but he felt like he did.

Garrus had taken this as his last case. As soon as he was finished he had to turn in his badge. He knew what to do, where to go. He always had a strong sense of justice; he would become a mercenary for justice. The protector of the people, their archangel.

For now he settled for studying the crime scene. The quarian was named Tali Zorah. She was the daughter of a Migrant Fleet admiral. As a powerful government official, he could make the Migrant Fleet very angry.

He would be grief-stricken; he might even resign. This was definitely going to cause a stir in the quarian government. This was in addition to rumors that the quarian-created geth were attacking. The galaxy was experiencing a definitive period of unrest.

But after this, Garrus would do what he could to help, become a Citadel vigilante. It sounded stupid in his head, but it was the right thing to do. He had always hated red-tape. After this, he would rip right through it and actually start saving people.

* * *

All she felt was pain, in her skin and in her soul. Her mother and a turian named Saren Arterius had kidnapped her from a lava filled planet named Therum. They had tortured her for weeks, demanding to know about the Protheans.

She had been of no help, but that had not stopped the torture. She wondered how anyone could do this, let alone her mother.

She was on a ship, they called it Sovereign. She was imprisoned while her capturers attempted to find the Mu Relay. Last night-or was it last day-they had found it. Her mother promised her a new age of prosperity for the universe, a reward for her suffering.

Liara was beginning to believe her. Her suffering had to be for something. Her mother apologized for the torture and told her of the incoming ships. The Reapers. They would kill everything, they were what killed the Protheans, but if civilization bowed instead of stood, they might survive.

Survival was necessary. It was worth it. Her pain was worth it. It had to be. She was set free, so she could see the glory of the return. The return of the Reapers. It was going to be magnificent. She was now working willingly, anything to be able to see their return.

In her research for Saren, she found a loophole. They were planning on bringing the Reapers back through the Citadel, but there was a way to stop it. Liara went to Ilos herself and took the Prothean VI, Vigil. There was no way that the arrival could be stopped. It was perfect.

The Reapers flooded through, cleansing the foolish morons who chose to resist. They were processed and turned into new Reapers, a glorious fate for idiotic civilians.

To become a god, to become perfect. Liara lusted for this conclusion, yearned to reach godhood. Eventually her mechanical lords allowed her this. Her, Saren, her mother Benezia, all were converted into the blood of a god.

In her last moments of life, Liara T'Soni felt nothing but the appreciation for her conversion. She witnessed the return of the Reapers, and as she felt herself ascend, she realized what she had done. What had been done. In her last moments she wondered why she couldn't have been stopped, why she couldn't have been rescued.

* * *

Garrus looked around the Citadel, it was destroyed. The station was filled with fires and geth. Saren's ship, Sovereign, headed an army of geth ships attacking the Citadel. They destroyed the fleet, and killed the Council. Garrus was doing his best to save people, he was helping them gather together as they moved from house to house.

He had around fifty civilians with him when Sovereign entered the arms of the Citadel. Saren was going to destroy the Citadel, the question is how did he get the geth to work with him, and why attack the Citadel?

For some reason now, the Citadel's arms were opening up. Finally, the Citadel fleet could shoot at Sov-wait...no. They were gone. All of them. There were no more ships, the geth had decimated them. That much was already clear. What was going to happen then? It was obvious. They were all going to die.

Suddenly, there was a flash from the center of the Citadel, almost like that of a Mass Relay. Then ships began to leave from the center, massive ships like Sovereign, and slightly smaller ones. They were all obviously associated. They were numbered in the thousands.

_"Spirits, how can anyone fight all those?" _thought Garrus as he gazed at the stream of ships flying by. Garrus would never learn the answer, because one of the ships fired a laser beam directly at him, destroying the whole area. The ships continued this, using their weaponry to destroy all life and structure on the Citadel.

Garrus managed to open his eyes one last time, staring at the massive ships. He was going to die. Everyone was. He could tell that he had lost function in all his body and lost a lot of blood. He would be dead in a few seconds now. In the few seconds he had left, Garrus wondered why there couldn't be a person to warn them, a person to guide them, a sheperd.

* * *

Review please!


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